The president of the Gulf Cattlemen's Association, Barry Hughes, travelled more than 2,600km from his home at Forsyth in north Queensland to attend the rural debt summit in Canberra on Tuesday. He presented a plan of six 'urgent' solutions to the forum to 'stabilise' the northern beef industry including improved debt mediation and interest rate relief.

There are plans in Queensland to build one of the country's biggest irrigation schemes, as debate over whether northern Australia can become the nation's next great food bowl ramps up.

Integrated Food and Energy Developments (IFED) wants to build two dams and siphon 555,000 megalitres of water per year from Queensland's Gilbert River catchment to irrigate a huge sugar cane plantation.

The $2 billion proposal also includes plans for a sugar cane mill in Georgetown, along with ethanol production facilities and an abattoir.

ABC Radio's AM program has obtained a confidential document revealing plans by the company behind the proposal to explore even greater water extraction, and that prospect troubles an already divided community.